Your Audience Doesn’t Know What You Know: 5 Tips on Creating Content for Newcomers
A few years ago, I oversaw a company’s website content for a specific audience, and a new page needed to be created detailing some onboarding security steps this audience needed to take. At that time, content creation wasn’t up to me to write, but was the responsibility of each individual department (we could’ve had a more successful governance strategy, but more on that in another post), so IT went about writing a new page. When I got it, it was standard fare you’d find on the internal site: Jargons, acronyms, information anyone in the company would understand.
Except it didn’t serve our audience – who had no prior knowledge of our company practices – at all.
Part of the disconnect was that the page was asked to be created by a department of non-writers who didn’t have to think about the specific audience I spent every day working with. But we were able to work together on revisions and launched the page successfully.
Maybe you’re experiencing something similar in your content: What’s on the page isn’t aligning with your audience. Here’s how I would think about creating new content for a my readers:
Define Your Audience and What They Know
Who is your audience? In my case, the audience was very specific, and came pre-packaged, so it was easy to understand the demographics. Sometimes that’s not the case, and you’ll need to do some work to find out who your audience is, most often through engagement and possibly surveying. You’ll often hear this referred to as “creating personas” – essentially it’s creating a character of your audience so you can see the as individuals.
But beyond audience demographics, a much simpler question to answer is: How much do they know when they visit my site or engage with my content? An industry professional will require a different kind of content than a beginner. Someone who’s been in your business ecosystem will require a different kind of content than someone encountering it for the first time.
Be Deliberate in Thinking About Your Approach
It may seem easy to rattle off acronyms, jargon, and lingo because that’s the world you’ve been living in. And if your content is for a seasoned professional, then by all means, do so. But if you’re creating content for a beginner, be deliberate in your approach. What do I want to convey to my reader – whether it be information or a call to action – and how can I do it in such a way that meets them at their knowledge level? What do I need to explain? What kind of voice do I want to use? Get outside your business’s culture either as you write, or as you edit, to view it as a newcomer.
Teach As You Go
As you’re creating content for someone with little previous knowledge, consider yourself a teacher, and don’t be afraid to dumb the contents down, chunk it up into manageable parts, have step-by-step instructions, use short sentences, or include definitions in parenthesis. The aforementioned IT page got a revision as such: Here are our terms, here’s what they mean, here’s what it means to you, and here’s what we want you to do. If you have a call to action, build the steps towards it, and explain why.
Consistency With Other Content
If this audience member is engaging with other content on your site, remember to keep all your wording and terms consistent so they can follow along. Another example from the IT page: We had already gotten our audience to understand certain terms and references, yet IT didn’t know that and used other terms and references. (Ideally, you’ll have a small team of writers, or even just one content creator, who will know the style and wording of the site who can work with various departments to write their content – instead of asking siloed colleagues to write for the site.) Again, it came down to simple editing and collaboration to get everything consistent, but keep that in mind from the outset.
Revise, Feedback, Listen, and Revise
True writing is done in revision, and you must allow yourself to be nimble enough to revise, rework, and rethink content – even if something is already published. Additionally, if you’re getting questions or confusion from your audience, revise, rework, or rethink your content and update your page! Unfortunately, the blame often gets laid on the audience for not understanding and getting confused. But why are they getting confused? Is it something that can be fixed in some rewording, or even just a simple shifting of some menus or site structure? As content creators, it’s our duty to make sure that our communication is clear, able to be followed, understandable, and actionable.
Hopefully that helps you think through some ways to tailor your content to newcomers to your site. Feel free to drop any other tips in the comments.
